Modes of Media Therapy

Tends to include these types of activities:

Assessment: Short review/interviews with stakeholders. The goal is to understand high-level gaps, project scope, and framework, leadership, etc.

Current state & Definition: Dovetailing with assessment, we dive further to Identify project scope/priorities. Typically the companies that require media therapy have either engaged consultants over the ‘years’ who have provided reports and other documentation with assessment details and recommendations which the company(ies) either have not implemented at all or possibly done a version without continuity, commitment, consensus, budget/funding and/or a plan of action that fits the organization ability to execute. Or they instituted DAM and its at its end of life or the company has matured and their DAM hasn’t. This stage helps clear the fog, define realistic goals, and identify what is important now, gaps, owners, participants, and more. It again includes interviews, assessment, and then active planning with company participation. As Media Therapists, we focus on ‘action’, homework, joint analysis, and execution. It’s about rolling sleeves up together so we can seamlessly work as a team to raise the bar/activity/results. Where it makes sense we like to join like organizations together informally — to ’share’ information and key learnings — facilitating discussions and exchange.

Requirements & Action:  Create core working teams, define stakeholder(s)’s role versus ‘worker be’s” and getting busy to either better define goal & plan or build a plan to execute the goal. It also includes financial modeling/planning, vendor selection, organizing for executive or board approval, workflow (today & future), etc. Building actionable teams/facilitating teams: hand in hand with the above activities the goal is to optimize internal stakeholders. This allows for building consensus, ownership, and providing tools, internal support, and transparent communications along the way. Most times the Media Therapist helps to project manage & run the teams for a period of time and then transitions them for sustainability to internal staff ownership. The Therapist now becomes the ‘advisor’.

Governance and Best Practices: As part of defining project goals the Media Therapist works with stakeholders and teams to define their internal compass, their dictionary of terms (so they can speak consistently in the same language reinforcing the DAM foundation), initiative governance & policy to help guide and create internal checkpoints/audits to help acknowledge activity completion/success as well as re-pivot when needed; identify jeopardizes; better escalate and resolve conflict/issues; manage and communicate; and have the ability to proactively evaluate growth and manage new technology opportunities, shifts in business and key learnings along the way.

Change Management: Media Therapists facilitate change management and onboarding activities as part of the process. They encourage open feedback loops and create processes that allow transparency which aligns the core team to better execute — feedback and inputs along the way also provide early check/audits, missed or wrong information for early correction or inclusion, question/acknowledgment, and buy-in.